


awusemuhle

by kat8cha



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Magical Tattoos, Okoye and Steve are minor characters here, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), SAM AND T'CHALLA ARE MEANT TO BE, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Tattoos, also i swear to god t'challa doesn't speak to Sam directly, like WTF dude, the whole fucking movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 17:45:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7371511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kat8cha/pseuds/kat8cha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>T'challa goes to the soulmarkist as part of his coming of age, Sam visits one on a whim. They come away marked with each other's words and their worlds collide many years later. T'challa knows that Sam might be his one... but does Sam know T'challa is meant to be his?</p>
            </blockquote>





	awusemuhle

**Author's Note:**

> *so I looked up how to say ‘you are beautiful’ in Xhosa (since that's what Wakandans speak in the MCU) and I found this and IF IT IS WRONG I APOLOGIZE. 
> 
> Also, I love the idea of soulmate tattoos. I feel like in a universe where fucking THOR exists that soulmate tattoos, magical shit that lets you know who you might fall in love with, would totally be a thing.

Soulmate tattoos were a ritual in Wakanda, a part of the week long coming of age ceremony every man and woman underwent. They weren’t a requirement, not anymore, but of certain people they were expected. T’challa had known for years that he would be expected to put himself under the tattooist’s needle while burned herbs swirled in a dark room. Even in a technological age, for some things, the old ways were best. 

The tattoo lay covered by fine gauze until he was officially an ‘adult’ and then, impatient, in the light of dawn he ripped the bandage off.

‘So, you like cats?’

The language was foreign to him, not anything he had learned in the classroom. An outsider, then, from… he traced the tattoo with his fingertips. Well, he would discover from where. He would meet them eventually. It was fated.

\--

Sam’s choice to get a soulmate tattoo was 60% poor impulse control, 10% Riley, and 20% longing and 10% alcohol. On leave, on the town, hanging off the shoulders of his Best Friend, Sam’d found himself staring up at the hand painted sign detailing a genuine certified soulmarkist. There weren’t a lot of those left. They were coming back, had been since the 70s, but it was a slow growth. Learning to channel the language of the soul, or however they explained it, took years of training. Not to mention training to give tattoos. Sam couldn’t even guess how long that took.

“Let’s go in.” Sam’d said to Riley, nary a slur to be heard.

Riley’d grinned at him, loose and easy, and the two of them had fished out their wallets and trooped inside.

After two hours, with the haze of the beer cleared but the headache from the herbs kicking in, Riley’d left with his money returned and Sam’d left with his arm itching under the gauze.

“Sorry, man.” Sam clapped Riley on the back. “I guess you’re going to have to be the playboy for us both.” He aims for light, joking, it doesn’t come out that way. Riley’s smile back at him is sad and Sam feels guilt for the words hidden on his arm. “Hey, if it makes you feel better? I won’t look until you think you find the one.”

Riley laughed at that. He didn’t believe it, he teased Sam for months, even after the bandage had come off and Sam had found an armband he could keep wrapped around it, just in case. 

Sam didn’t look at the words until…

Until a long time after Riley’s death. Until he’d accepted it. Until he’d moved on.

He looks at it, a curling tattoo that looks more like a tribal tatt than a soulmark. It isn’t a language he recognizes, if it’s a language. Maybe the markist made a mistake. Sam traces it, a box that opens and curls inside, waving lines…

Whatever it means, he’ll find out. He’s a resourceful guy and he’s got the whole of D.C. at his fingertips, plenty of out of towners around to quiz about languages.

He’d find out.

\--

His language tutor, who knew more about the outside world than anyone but his father, identified the language for T’challa. “English,” she said with a sharp smile as she twisted T’challa’s wrist from side to side, “a joke, I should think.”

T’challa was impatient. Already a man, a prince, the Panther… he knew patience was one thing he should cultivate. English, he knew of it, the language spoken by the English, spoken in America, spoken round the world because of Western Imperialism… “What does it say?” He asked.

Impatient.

She smiled at him, still that same sharp smile. “You will have to learn.”

And then she released his wrist to turn for her computer terminal. With a few sharp taps she had uploaded many different lessons on the English language to his personal device. “I expect to see you for lessons.”

More lessons, an adult already and more lessons. T’challa itched under the mantle of prince. His friends had already begun to settle into their new lives and he would be confined to the classroom once again.

But it would be worth it, his soulmate spoke English and he will want to answer their question in kind. 

With that in mind, his tutor taught him how to say ‘yes, I like cats’ for their first lesson.

He does his best to treat it as ironic.

\--

Sam worked for the VA, ran the mall, researched pictographic languages in dusty libraries. He sat on tiny chairs and poured over books that he wasn’t allowed to remove from the library, many of them he had to sign affidavits to look at and wasn’t allowed to leave the reading room with them (hence the tiny chairs). He made photocopies of his wrist to trace a variety of colored markers over, multiple copies because he kept losing them. He took a photo of his wrist and sent it to an old friend from highschool that his mother said ‘has done very well for herself, you know she works at the U.N.?’

It probably wasn’t the way his mother wanted him to take her hint.

It took him time to come to the conclusion the language is Wakandan. Months of stumbling through the library pointed him towards it but it was only when he stumbled on the little old librarian that reminded him strongly of Eartha Kitt (like, if Eartha Kitt had a twin, she was definitely that librarian) that he was directed towards the right course of study.

“Hmm.” The little librarian (Mrs. Ngige) said ponderously. She lead him through aisles that grew steadily closer to closer and then pulled a book off a bottom shelf. It was half her size and Sam found himself taking it from her without a second thought. It smelled of mildew and dust and when he lay it carefully on a table and cracked it open the spine creaked with age.

“It looks like this, doesn’t it?” She leaned past him to flip the book open halfway to a dusty, ragged bookmark. The page is half full of loops and lines, like his soulmark, but none of them are the exact sigil. He’s so grateful, so distracted, he doesn’t think to wonder why she knew exactly where to look. “Wakandan. Not a lot of books on them, not much information. They closed themselves off centuries ago.”

She smiled him with eyes large behind coke bottle glasses. “I’ll find you some more.”

It took three years for him to make a guess at what his soulmark meant. 90% of the material on Wakanda was ancient as hell, the last 10% was all research papers published sporadically over the last 20 years. Most of that 90% is fantastical stories of Mystical Africa that fits in with a lot of the bullshit novels Sam had been assigned to read at school. Translations of Wakandan are scattered throughout the texts, next to stories about panther gods and giant panther statues. The modern research papers are a little easier to use but don’t have much visual media for him to compare his wrist to.

It pissed him off whenever the papers called Wakanda a ‘dead language’. Someone out there spoke it and it was rude as hell for them to assume shit about a country that no one had visited in years.

He never finds a direct match to his wrist, never quite figures out if looping one way or the other made a difference. The closest pictograph he can find translate (in a long-winded, round about, and utterly British manner thank you very much Mr. Translater) to ‘fuck off’.

It wasn’t an exact fit, one line shifted to the left, a loop to the right, but for all Sam knew the language had changed and the writing style had shifted.

He wondered what he had done to piss his soulmate off.

\--

“So,” said Sam Wilson, the Falcon, a rogue Avenger with no respect for authority and a blatant disregard for civilian casualties, “you like cats?”

It rang in T’challa’s ears to the beat of his heart, to the sound of the headache he refused to acknowledge. He curled his hands into fists to keep from reaching for the words etched on his skin. He could not look at them, nor at the man in back, just in case what he wanted to say was visible on his face. He wanted to yell, to lash out, to be angry at this man for denying him his vengeance, wanted to lash out because his words had seemed to promise… 

Something fun, something light, a meeting not tinged with darkness and the weight of his father’s death on his mind.

His tutor had been so gleeful that T’challa had submitted himself for more instruction past the age of adulthood. His head was stuffed with different languages, not just English or those of their closest neighbors but the languages he would need to communicate with ‘the world at large’. It had been a boon when his father had decided to open up Wakanda. 

He had been filled with hope at the thought that he could join one of the small bands of Wakandans making their way, educating, helping, building… that perhaps offering humanitarian aid would be how he met his one. 

Not here.

Not now.

T’challa was too full of anger now, too full of it to look at his soulmate, far too full of anger to speak to them. He did not wish his first words to be said in anger and that was what pulled him back from the brink. It was the wrong time to meet his soulmate, if Sam Wilson was his soulmate. If his words were etched on Sam Wilson’s skin.

He did not wish his words to be angry ones. 

“Sam.” Rogers groaned. It broke the moment, broke through T’challa’s spiral. 

Wilson protested, a distant echo of noice, Rogers is a target on which he can vent his rage, his regret, his grief. Rogers can take all T’challa can throw at him and perhaps more. T’challa will see how much Captain America can take. He will rip the man to shreds to get to Barnes.

“Your suit,” Rogers asked, “vibranium?”

He spoke as if he knew. As if he knew anything about vibranium, Wakanda’s pride and joy. He stole from them and oh, it was not him and oh, it was so long ago, but Wakanda had a long memory. He wore a vibranium shield on his back and he did not know. He knew nothing of Wakanda, the home of his shield, of his symbol. This man, whose actions led to the death of Wakandan citizens, who led to the death of his father, who stopped him.

“The Black Panther has been a protector of Wakanda for generations. A mantle passed from warrior to warrior. Now because your friend murdered my father, I also wear the mantle of king. So I ask you, as both warrior and king, how long do you think you can keep your friend safe from me?”

Out of the corner of his eye he wathed Wilson. Wilson didn’t flinch, just looked interested in their argument. Good. If Wilson was his soulmate...

Then his first words would not be said in anger.

The rest he could figure out once Barnes was dealt with. He would have justice.

For his father. For his people.

\--

So, stuck in maximum detention, tortured for information (he was waiting for it, again, he’s surprised when after Stark leaves it doesn’t come immediately) and the only people he could really talk to are his fellow inmates. (Scott has some funny stories, at least, but a lot of them are about his kid and that was just depressing.) Sam did what anyone stuck in a teeny-tiny cell would do. He tried to stay busy. He paced his cell, back and forth and back and forth, he and Clint did push up contests, sit-ups. Scott tried to join them but he couldn’t keep up.

They teased him after that up until Wanda made biting remarks about pissing contests.

He can tell from the look on her face that she would give anything to join them, he can read the strain in the muscles in her neck, he watched her jerk against her bindings. 

They told more stories after that. Clint, this time, hazy undescriptive stories about working with SHIELD. Nothing that can be used against him. 

They’re on The Raft for a while (Sam took the name to mean they were somewhere out at sea, though it didn’t feel at all like a boat, the name had made Clint’s face go grim but he didn’t explain). Some nights, despite the contests and the piss poor food and having nothing else to do, Sam couldn’t sleep. He would kill one of the guards (happily) for a chance at a long run. A good, long run, he yearned for his weird little route around D.C. He missed the track at the Avengers HQ. He needed to move, to tire himself out.

He heard something, in the dark, and he paused in his paces.

He’s not surprised when Steve steps out of the darkness. 

Well. 

He’s a little surprised.

“On your left.” Steve said, laughter in his eyes, because he was a jerk, the best of jerks and Sam shook his head. The sound of Steve’s voice has roused Clint and Wanda in their cells (though Scott snores on). 

“Man, you have got to lay off that.” Sam banged his hand on the glass of his cage. “You gonna open the door or what?”

\--

T’challa was waiting aboard the jet when Rogers and the rest of the fugitive Avengers stumbled aboard. He counted them (one, two, three, four) and did his best not to gaze too long at Wilson. He looked as if he had been roughed up, although perhaps some of his wounds were from their battle (it was not so long ago, he thinks, the bruises could still be fresh). All four of them appear tired and hungry from their confinement, cold and wet from the rain that seemed to lash The Raft continuously. The witch, no, Maximoff stretched her arms, above her, to the side, she smiled at her hands and freedom of movement. T’challa would bet that her movement had been confined. The thief and the assassin glanced around the jet nervously.

No, Lang was nervous, Barton was assessing.

Wilson stepped towards the pilot’s seat. T’challa did not use it as a brace, he looked to Okoye who looked back towards the cabin.

“Is this all?” She asked.

Rogers nodded. “This is everyone.”

T’challa had half expected running, screaming, perhaps the sound of gunfire as they made their escape. Instead there is just the thunder of the waves and the sound of rain against their windshield. He chose not to ask about the men who had stood in Rogers’ way, no doubt they are resting peacefully. The door to their escape route closed with a quite click and they lifted off. On a good day the vertical lift is seamless, barely a breath of difference between it and sitting still, but the waves rock around them and the weather pummels them from all side. Seated and strapped in, as Barton and Maximoff have chosen to be, it would be unnoticeable.

Sam teetered forward, ready to fall. He may have, without T’challa’s instantaneous reaction, have caught himself on the wall or one of the straps that hung from the ceiling. Instead his fall is halted by T’challa’s arms. He is a warm, but not reassuring, weight.

“Thanks.” Sam said.

T’challa opened his mouth to reply. ‘You’re welcome’ would have been polite but… he froze. He realized that these would be his first words spoken to Sam Wilson (he is silently amazed at how far he has made it) and… if Sam Wilson is his soulmate then his words would solidify it. He would be tied to a very brave, dedicated man who was also tied to… T’challa kept his eyes on Wilson and did not look at Rogers.

He was sure the two of them were only friends.

Sam took T’challa’s silence (brief though it was, his flash of thoughts happened in the span of a breath) as a chance to press on. “Not just for this,” he said as he pushed himself out of T’challa’s arms to stand on his own, “for the rescue too. And keeping that one,” he jerked his thumb at Roggers (who watched them with a small, amused smile), “alive.”

T’challa nodded. Of course. 

He opened his mouth again.

He meant to say something simple but meaningful, noticable. How many people had said ‘you’re welcome’ to Sam in his lifetime? As first words they couldn’t be too unusual. Sam Wilson seemed to enjoy helping people. He paused too long and T’challa could see Sam’s face begin to close off. 

“Awusemuhle.*” It was not kingly to blurt out words, it wasn’t… well, it wasn’t something T’challa generally did. He felt his cheeks burn hotly and he ignored the way Okoye’s shoulders shook in silent laughter. “What I mean is,” he cleared his throat and willed himself to stop blushing, “you are welcome.”

There, if Sam Wilson was his match, if he had T’challa’s words inked on his skin that would be… different.

There was no spark of recognition in Wilson’s eyes.

Well.

T’challa felt disappointment settle in his gut. He supposed that Sam Wilson would have made for a complicated soulmate. He was a foreigner (although, who else would speak English to him?) and he was tied up in a grand conspiracy of ‘superheroes’. He nodded at the man and took the co-pilots seat next to Okoye. Wilson turned back towards Rogers and the rest of the former Avengers.

Okoye attempted to catch his eye.

He would not meet her gaze.

\--

Wakanda…

Wow.

Sam didn’t know how to feel about Wakanda. It’s not like he’d seen the whole country, except a swath of it from the windows of T’challa’s jet on their way inbound. Forests, mountains, lots of mist. Central Wakanda, which Sam had been given the royal tour of, was… it was awe inspiring. It was amazing. And Sam… he’d grown up in Harlem, surrounded by people who shared his skin color, but it still amazed him that out of all the Avengers he was the one that Wakandans felt most comfortable talking to. Sam didn’t speak the language but that didn’t seem to be a barrier to them. They talked at him, or to the interpreters that followed in the Avengers wake, or they made overtures in near picture perfect English.

They eyed Steve and Wanda distrustfully. Sam wasn’t sure if it was a color thing or the fact that Steve and Wanda had faced the most blame for the incident in Lagos. (Clint and Scott had taken the quick train back to the US, family, you know?) 

Sam didn’t spend a lot of time outside mingling though. He didn’t feel all that comfortable, despite his color his clothes marked him as an outsider as did his inability to speak the language. He’d yet to be offered a tutor or anything and the interpreter was a nice man and all but… it was awkward. It was also awkward to be followed everywhere he went, it made him itchy under the skin. At least inside of the… it felt wrong to call it a castle because it didn’t look anything like what Sam thought of as a ‘castle’ but Sam didn’t know what else you called the home of a king, inside the castle Sam wasn’t followed around. The castle… building… compound… it was an impressively sleek building that stretched high above the tree line. It also had a kickass view of the giant ass panther statue that Wakanda was REALLY proud of.

He’d thought the books had been exaggerating the giant statue. He probably shouldn’t have been, it was probably about the size of the Sphinx (not like Sam had ever seen the Sphinx, or the Pyramids) but he’d really thought that ‘a statue of their god which stood as tall as a mountain, shattering the morning mist with reflections of sunlight’ had been poetic license. 

“Are you lost?” Sam turned to look behind him. Okoye stood behind him, her arms crossed over her chest. She always managed to look unimpressed with Sam despite the fact that Sam couldn’t find another word to describe her with besides ‘impressive’.

Well, beautiful, amazing, awe-inspiring… 

Sam shrugged. “Just loitering.” He’d woken up before the sun (again) and had decided that if he was awake and wanting a run he could tire himself out exploring all the fancy twisting hallways of T’challa’s home. He’d found a good place to view the panther statue just as the sun’s rays were hitting it and, except for the craving for orange juice, coffee and a blueberry scone, his morning had definitely been looking up. 

Okoye lifted his eyebrows at him. Yup. Not impressed.

Sam rubbed self-consciously at his arm, a nervous habit, before the lightbulb went off. He hadn’t thought to ask anyone about the soulmark which… well, he’d only been in Wakanda for a few days. His interpreter would probably have been happy to help but he wasn’t here now and Okoye was. Maybe showing her his soulmark would, if not impress her, at least give them something to talk about. “Can I ask you a question?”

He was already pulling back his sleeve.

Okoye leaned close to his soulmark and… was that a smirk? Whatever amused expression crossed her face was hidden quickly behind a stoic façade. “It means ‘you are beautiful’.” She looked Sam up and down and then raised her eyebrows. 

“So it is Wakandan?” Sam pressed. “I wasn’t sure…” he drifted off, suddenly grateful that he hadn’t asked her to confirm his own suspicions.

“You are beautiful, huh.” He grinned at Okoye, even if she didn’t agree with the speaker it made him feel giddy to think that his soulmate thought he was beautiful. “Loads better than ‘fuck off’.”

This startled her, her eyes widened slightly and she took a half step back. “What translation service were you using?” She asked, offended. Sam was grateful it was the poor translation that offended her and not his language.

He shrugged. “Dusty old books written by dusty old dudes. There’s not,” he stopped, “there wasn’t a lot available on Wakanda.”

Judging by the look on her face that was going to have to change. Well, good, as long as they made sure that information was provided to the right people, of course, and the right information. Wakanda probably had a whole treasure trove of state secrets they didn’t want to get out and guidebooks were probably out of the question… although, maybe not. Wakanda did want to become a bigger part of the world at large. Maybe tourism would be the next industry to boom. 

“It is pronounced awusemuhle,” she paused, expectant, and Sam racked his brain to figure out who might have said it to him. He’d had a lot of conversations in the past few days, new words and new people but that didn’t sound familiar. Her eyebrows inched higher with every passing breath and, okay, clearly she had been there when it happened. They didn’t actually spend a lot of time together since she was T’challa’s bodyguard.

T’challa… wait.

“T’challa?!”

\--

If asked, T’challa would refute that he was hiding. Hiding required a certain level of effort and subterfuge that T’challa had disdained the use of. Now, if you asked if he was avoiding Sam, he would have to admit that perhaps he was. But, should anyone else (and no one would) didn’t a broken heart deserve some time to heal? And he knew that his brief crush on Sam Wilson was not fit for the epics but tales of would-be-soulmates and mistaken identities filled the minds and imaginations of storytellers worldwide.

There would likely be more misfires. 

“So,” Sam Wilson slumped down onto the matt by T’challa’s side. T’challa, suspended in mid-air from a bar, would have frozen if he had not been in the middle of exercising. The other man had approached from a blindspot and must have walked very carefully so that T’challa would not hear him. T’challa grunted in recognition and curled upward.

Hopefully his flush would be mistaken to be from exertion.

“…so.” Sam drifted off again. T’challa wasn’t sure what the other man was building up to. “Can I ask you a question?”

T’challa sighed and dropped from the bar. He felt sweat drip in trails down his arms and chest. Sam was ready with a towel for him to press against his face and the back of his neck. “What can I help you with, Wilson?”

The other man made a face at that, a peculiar twist of his mouth that he wore whenever addressed by his last name. He pushed himself up the wall with his back and turned his arm over.

He was wearing a short sleeve shirt and the soulmate tattoo on his arm were swirls of dark ink that drew T’challa’s gaze. 

His own words to Sam, his first words, were reflected back at him. Undeniable.

“So,” Sam drawled, when T’challa met his gaze the foreigner’s amusement was clear, he already knew, “I was wondering if you could help me translate this. I’ve been wondering for years and I’d hate to miss out on my soulmate because of a language barrier.”

Carefully T’challa grasped the back of Sam’s arm and drew his thumb over the swirls of a familiar word. He felt Sam shiver in his grasp. “It says awusemuhle.” He inched closer to Sam, testing the waters. Sam’s smile was all the encouragement he needed to hover, just a breath away. “It means-”

Wilson kissed him.

T’challa had years to imagine his first kiss with his soulmate. He had kissed before, men and women both, had played the sex games all young men play. He had never been overly imaginative, had never thought his first kiss with his soulmate would be full of lightning strikes or the roar of the panther god. Instead it is a kiss, warm, wet, and clearly well practiced. He kept his hand on Sam’s arm, his thumb protectively pressed against the thump of his hearbeat and the black lines of the tattoo as Sam reached for his ass and squeezed.

He laughed into the kiss.

Steve Rogers cleared his throat.

It would not have been enough for T’challa but Sam broke the kiss to turn to the side and look at his friend. “What’s up?”

His voice was husky. 

T’challa pressed them together, earning a squeak and the hot press of Sam’s body against his. Hard and warm, he pressed his face into Sam’s neck. He smelled of honey. 

It was Sam’s turn to chuckle, a husky vibration against T’challa’s cheek. 

“Are you guys going to get a room or should I come back later?” Rogers asked.

“Dude, I am making out with the king the whole damn country is his room, alright? So, you know,” Sam stopped groping at T’challa’s ass to presumably wave at Roger’s, “be off, peasant.”

It made T’challa smile.

It also made him bite, just a little, enough to get Sam’s attention back on him. He heard Rogers laugh as he left and he did not care.

Because Wilson was kissing him again.

And it was a good kiss.


End file.
